


Eden, Gomorrah, and Other Fine Places

by Zetared



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 06:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10825467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zetared/pseuds/Zetared
Summary: Hotels, diners, and roadside attractions make up the road that leads a preacher, a monster, and one hell of a woman to God...and to each other.





	Eden, Gomorrah, and Other Fine Places

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this very fast. All mistakes are my own.

**Eden**

Jesse pushes his his plate over to Tulip with a sigh. If she’s gonna steal his fries, she might as well be able to reach ‘em without putting both of their beer bottles at risk.

“What I don’t get,” Cassidy says, drenching his own plate in so much ketchup that it makes the pickle on his burger float away on a blood-red sea, “is why he’d want to keep folks from free will that much in the first place, being as how it’s a major tenet of the belief and all.”

Jesse sighs. “I thought we said we were gonna drop the ‘shop talk for the night?”

Cassidy takes a bite of his burger. Red squelches out, coats his fingers, drips down his wrist. He lifts his arm up, sucking at his own pulse point, licking the tomato paste away like an animal lapping gravy from a bone. It’s disgusting. It makes something warm and soft hum in Jesse’s chest. Genesis, maybe, or his own damn heart--it’s hard to tell, anymore.

“Not my fault, is it? Asking for it, stopping at a diner called ‘The Garden,’ weren’t you?”

Jesse points at Tulip. “Weren’t me that was driving.”

“And it never will be, long as we’re traveling around in my car, Jesse Custer.” Tulip picks up a veritable handful of fries from Jesse’s plate. She leans over the table, smearing her pilfered goods through the pool of ketchup on Cass’s plate. The fried potatoes come away as drippy red as Cassidy’s arm. She doesn’t stop to lick or suck, though. Tulip just crams the mess of fries in her mouth, chewing with chipmunk cheeks and swallowing hard. A dollop of ketchup catches at the corner of her lips, all wrong against the lush, plummy shade of her lipstick. Jesse only barely prevents himself from leaning forward and brushing it away with his thumb. He learned his lesson after the Genesis Kiss Incident. Tulip and he are on their way to re-building their bridges, maybe, but any display of affection is be had on her terms and her’s alone.

Jesse doesn’t mind so much. Way he’s been feeling, lately, he hardly trusts his own judgement. He lets Tulip lead the way both in their relationship and in the direction of their road trip and, so far, it’s gone all right.

“Padre, I just wanna know about the free will business,” Cassidy presses.

Jesse rolls his eyes. “I dunno, Cass. Put it on the list of things you wanna ask when we find the old bastard, all right?”

“After the last time, I don’t think there’s much point in playing Q&A with the Almighty,” Tulip muses. She goes for another of Jesse’s fries and he just lets her because, hell, he’s full enough, anyway.

The waitress comes up with their bill. She’s a tiny thing with big, sad eyes and pinched, nervous lips. Jesse figures she’s fifteen if she’s a day, and it’s probably barely legal, her working this late into the night.

Cassidy asks the girl for a refill, pulling her name--Beth--from her nametag, purring over it with his foreign brogue. Her calls her love and compliments the braided bracelet on her wrist and then yelps, loud and startled, when Tulip kicks him hard under the table. Her eyes blaze murder, and Cassidy--though clearly confused--is smart enough to take the hint and let the girl on her way.

“She’s _a child_ , Cassidy,” Tulip growls.

Cass’s eyes go wide, and he puts up his--still red-stained--hands in the universal gesture of defense. “Wasn’t meaning anything by it! Honest. Just thought she could use a bit of kindness, is all. Jaysus, woman, are you wearin’ steel-toed boots?”

“You wanna show that girl some kindness, leave her a big, fat tip. Asshole.” Tulip crosses her arms over her chest and for one teeny, tiny moment Jesse almost suspects that she’s actually...no. Impossible.

Jesse’s eyes flick from Tulip to Cassidy, from Tulip’s blazing anger to Cassidy’s stricken deference, and for the first time he sees what’s probably been bubbling up between the two of them from the start.

Genesis rolls around in his guts, or maybe that’s his own green-eyed sense of envy. Either way, though, he keeps it muzzled. There’s too much that can go wrong, a man acts on his lesser impulses when trapped in a small car with two other folks for miles and miles of road.

To Jesse’s surprise, Cassidy leaves a crumpled, dirty twenty dollar bill under the check on their way out.

\--

**Gomorrah**

There’s only one bed in the flea-infested motel, and the question that churns over and over in Tulip’s mind is who, exactly, is gonna end up in the middle. Back in the days of Carlos, such things hadn’t been of any concern. Thanks to all the heists and scams, they’d usually had the money to burn on two rooms, and if ever they didn’t, it was easy work for her and Jesse to come together and buffalo the other man out to sleep in the car.

They aren’t going to make Cassidy sleep in the car. If they do, he’ll get stuck out in the sun, come dawn, and burn up. And, besides, Cassidy--for all his faults--doesn’t make Tulip want to bash his brains in on the regular the way Carlos always did. Cassidy is a good man, in his way, for all that he’s probably more aptly described as a “good creature” than anything else. Cassidy, Tulip decides, is like a pet. And Tulip has pretty strong feelings about how one ought to treat a loyal dog, especially after the whole Brewski experience.

Cassidy comes up beside her. He stands just a tad too close, but she doesn’t get mad. She likes how he crowds her, like a knight at the elbow of a queen. Together, they stare, knowingly, at the single, narrow bed.

“Wouldn’t be my first time sleepin’ on a floor,” Cassidy says, carefully. “Gotta be a damn sight softer than the pews in the ol’ chapel, anyhow.”

Tulip rolls her eyes. “No you will not. I guess I should take the middle, though. Heaven forbid you and Jesse end up touchin’ privates in your sleep or somethin’.”

Cassidy looks at her, a wicked gleam in his eye that she hadn’t expected at all--more fool, her. “Ah, true enough; I’d wanna be awake for such a thing, I think. The better to really enjoy it.”

From the bathroom, something goes thud, followed by Jesse cursing up a storm. Tulip bites her bottom lip, her laughter rising up like bubbles in a mason jar of champagne. The walls in this place are thin as paper, and Cassidy’s voice carries more as a whisper than a shout, besides.

“Ya all right in there, Padre?” Cassidy calls, all innocence, and Tulip’s laughter finds voice, filling up the room, making it seem bigger and warmer than before.

“Well, then,” Tulip declares, grinning wide, wiping tears from the corner of her eyes. “Guess I’ll take his left side, if you wanna take his right.

“His right hand man,” Cassidy intones, more somber than she’d have credited, before--well, before they’d had an actual conversation, anyway, somewhere after the hospital but before the sex. “Sure enough.”

Tulip, without thinking about it, reaches out and tangles her fingers in his. His skin is warmer than one would expect from the undead. Then again, right from the start, Cassidy has defied her expectations both as a vampire and as a man. She leans into his chest, standing on her tiptoes and ghosting her lips over his own, a gentle tease. “Just this time, you an’ me’ll be the bread,” she whispers, sultry and coy. “Next time, I get to be the meat.”

Another loud, resounding thud comes from the bathroom. Jesse pops his head out of the bathroom, scowling at the two of them, suds still dripping from his hands. “You tryin’ to give a man a heart attack or what?”

Tulip just looks at him impassively, her fingers snagging themselves in the loops of Cassidy’s secondhand jeans. “Why, Preacher. If you don’t like what you’re hearin’, why don’t you come out here and put a stop to it?”

Cassidy stares from Tulip to Jesse and back again, eyes going comically wide. “Now, wait a minute. Padre, this isn’t what it looks--.”

“He _knows_ what it is, Cassidy.”

Tulip keeps her eyes on Jesse, on his pale, naked shoulders and the water dripping off the ends of his hair (starting to grow out, already, and all the better for it). “It’s a big enough bed, Jesse.”

“For sleeping, is what she means, and I’ll stay far away from her,” Cassidy asserts, still expecting a punch to the nose, if his jittering fingers and high, strained voice are anything to go by. He tries to pull back, but Tulip’s got a good grip, and she doesn’t let go of what’s hers without a fight.

“Jesse,” Tulip presses, exasperated. She juts her chin up at him in challenge, in demand. “C’ _mon_.”

Tulip isn’t even annoyed--much--when Jesse pushes her aside and gets all up in Cassidy’s face. She watches, amused and enthralled in turn, as he latches ahold of Cassidy’s shirt, tugging the taller man down.

Cassidy whimpers, but then he goes real still--realizing, finally, that he’s been anticipating the wrong kind of violence from the man pressing himself against his chest, half-naked and shower-damp. “Pa--Jesse?” Cassidy whispers, panicked expression going loose, his mouth just a little agape.

“You offered me a ‘shag,’ once,” Jesse whispers, which Tulip would have found surprising a few minutes before, but now just seems expected and right. Jesse’s smirk is cocky, but his eyes are open and deep. “I aim to collect.”

Jesse lurches forward, capturing those parted lips with his own, and Tulip steps up to the two of them, tossing the both of the men onto the bed with a hard shove against each of their shoulders. “Stop bein’ greedy,” she scolds them, putting herself on Jesse’s open side and throwing her arms around him, fingers scrabbling against Cassidy’s arms, plucking at worn flannel and ratty buttons, trying to find a way in. “It was _my_ idea.”

And since neither of her boys is a goddamn idiot, they shut up and let Tulip have her way.

\--

**Babylon**

The maze stretches out before them, more impressive by moonlight than the bright, sunlit photos on the postcards had suggested. Cassidy has come to understand in his hundred-some years of living that most things do, in fact, look better by cover of night than in the glare of the sun.

He figures it’ll look best right at dawn, though, with the clouds going all neon and the circle of the sun pushing its way up over the high, stonework walls.

“I don’t think this is worth the ten-dollar admission fee,” Tulips says, coming up beside him. She presses two bottles into his hands. One is a lukewarm beer. The other is a chilled nip of the red stuff, purchased off a butcher two towns back.

He drinks some of the blood down and then pours some of the beer into the half-emptied blood bottle, giving it a thorough stir. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her--what seems ages ago, now--that he preferred the taste of alcohol. Blood is good. Blood makes him immortal, makes him alive. But life, funnily enough, doesn’t have much in the way of kick against the tongue.

“Lucky for us you got those wire-cutters, then. Makes the fees a moot point, doesn’t it?”

Tulip shrugs. “Still too much damn money to ask for a bunch of rocks.”

“I like it,” Cassidy says.

“No surprises there. You liked the big ol’ ball of twine and that pan flute monstrosity, too.”

Cassidy nods. “And the bronze cast of the world’s largest round o’ cheese,” he reminds her, just to tease her a bit. He knows that the last several hundreds of miles have started to wear on the woman. Tulip is a free spirit, and she doesn’t much mind the road, but it’s the relentless grind, going nowhere, that’s taken the pluck out of her heartstrings, as it were.

“I’ve been thinking--.”

“Dangerous,” Tulip interrupts, with some of her old fire.

“--What would you say to finding one of the nicer shiteholes along the road, there, and stayin’ still, for a bit?”

Tulip turns her face to him. Her eyes catch the bright light of the full moon above him, and god damn his poor soul if the sight doesn’t make him feel like waxing poetic about the color of her irises and the perfect arch of her eyelashes and the like. She lifts a brow, skeptical. “What for?”

“Well, we’re runnin’ a bit low on cash, for one. Think I could get us some back with a bit of hustlin’, and I know you and the Padre got some good tricks up your sleeves in that regard.”

Tulip’s lips pull into a small smile, her eyes getting that far away gleam they do, sometimes, when she thinks back on her and Jesse’s past.

“And, besides, if I gotta slouch about in that back seat for much longer, my knees are gonna lock up for good an’ I’ll be stuck scuttling around like a crab for all eternity. And, honestly, love, that’s just more than a man can stand.”

Tulip laughs. She’s done that more and more, the last few weeks. Every time, it surprises him. Every time, it makes his black heart twist and batter about in his ribcage like a swallow on speed.

“Okay. We’ll talk to Jesse.”

“‘Talk to Jesse’ about what?” Jesse says, striding up the small hill, his hands deep in his pockets. He’s still wearing his preacher kit everywhere they go. Cassidy doesn’t mind it--to him, the collar and Jesse are one in the same, anyway--but he knows it’s been a point of contention between Jesse and their girlfriend, as of late. It’s one of the small, petty grievances he’s hoping a break might help to mend.

“About how lovely this maze is, look at it, in the moonlight, what a beaut,” Cassidy lies, because he has trouble telling Jesse things he knows the man doesn’t want to hear.

Tulip, bless her, has no such compunction. “We wanna put some stakes in the ground for a while, Jesse. We need money, the car needs a tuneup, and Cassidy needs walkies, apparently.”

Cassidy doesn’t take offense to the slight jab. Tulip has been comparing him to a mangy mutt for miles and miles, always with a heavy shading of genuine affection. It does him good, in a way. He likes the idea of being kept. He’s never had anyone willing to care that much about him, before. And now he’s got two.

“Don’t have time to idle, Tulip. We got a lot of ground to cover.”

“Of course we do, Jesse. That’s what happens when you go swanning off who knows where for something you don’t know exists, quite, let alone where the hell it is!”

Another small irritation, rubbing at them all, leaving open wounds behind, red and raw. They’ve been on this journey for a long time with no real direction, no real hope in hell of finding what they seek. At first, it was an adventure. Now, it’s a chore.

“Dammit, Tulip, you know this is important to me!” Jesse growls, stepping closer to her, a familiar darkness behind his eyes. Genesis, always at the core of him, always just a word away from bringing the both of them to their knees. Jesse hasn’t used Genesis against Tulip since the Kiss. Jesse hasn’t used it against Cassidy since Anneville. It hangs over their heads all the same, their own Sword of Damocles. If Jesse Says “go,” they will have to go.

But Tulip always gets what she wants. And she wants to stay.

“I want to stretch my fucking legs, Jesse,” Tulip snarls back, meeting him toe for toe without a flinch. “I want to eat somewhere that ain’t open twenty-four hours a day and talk to people I’m not sleepin’ with and, I don’t know, just _exist_ for a few days without worrying about gas money and roadmaps and Cassidy’s dumbass travelin’ games.”

“Aw, now!” Cassidy protests, weakly. “Thought you liked ‘I, Spy.’”

“The first fifty times, maybe. But, dammit, Cassidy, you gotta stop pickin’ random pieces of roadkill as your thing! It’s _cheating_.”

Jesse frowns. Then, his lips twitch.

“It isn’t funny, Jesse!” Tulip snaps, punching at his chest with one small, tight fist. The motion just knocks the laugh out of him. The sound is quiet, short lived, but real. For all that Tulip has been laughing more, Jesse’s laughter is rare as gold. Even his smiles are precious things, and right now he’s grinning to beat the band.

“Maybe we oughta stop, get one of them magnetic board games for you, Tulip, you hate ‘I, Spy’ so much.”

“Shut up, Jesse Custer! I’m mad at you!”

"Why? Didn’t say ‘no,’ did I? You’re right. We need a break.”

 "You dirty, lowdown son of a--!” Tulip pauses, fist trapped mid swing. “...I’m right?”

 Jesse nods. “We’re on a quest of our own making, darlin’. We can stop whenever you want. Wherever you want. However long.”

 Tulip’s fists fall at her side. She stares at Jesse, expression something almost approaching vulnerable. “I just want a few days. In a hotel, not a motel. One with a mini-fridge or something. And a decent cable package.”

Jesse reaches out, tentatively. He cups her jaw in his palm, pulling her gently toward him. “Okay.” He repeats his ‘ok’ between soft, pecking kisses.

Cassidy twists a bit, making a soft, satisfied noise as his spine pops. “Great. Sounds a treat. That mean we’re done with the maze, then?”

Tulip looks over at him, still held in Jesse’s embrace, her hands resting on his shoulders. “I thought you liked it here.”

“Yeah, sure, for the first few minutes. But, honestly, love, it’s just a big sprawling bunch of rock walls. Not exactly the most exciting sight of my unlife, is it? Besides, the sooner we get ourselves to a decent town, the sooner we can catch something really grand. Like a movie.”

Tulip makes a face. “I don’t want to watch any more of those dumb, artsy flicks you love so much.”

Cassidy shrugs. There’s no accounting for taste. “Fine, then. We’ll go in for something with a lot of explosions. Or, hey, something good an’ spooky. You get to cuddle with the person next to you when the boogie men jump out, you know. And it’s my turn to be in the middle.”

Tulip rolls her eyes. “I do _not_ jump at boogie men.”

“I do,” Jesse says, that small, warm smile tugging at his lips again. Yeah. He might not laugh as much as Tulip, perhaps, but he’s just as happy. Cassidy doesn’t blame either of them a bit. He’s been real happy, too. Jesse reaches out for Cassidy’s hand. In his other, he grips Tulip’s fingers. His two partners in hand, the Padre pulls forward, dragging them down the hill and away from the shining walls of the Maze of Babylon.

“C’mon,” Jesse says, brightly, “Tulip wants breakfast from a place that ain’t open all night, we’re gonna have to get on the road.”

\--

**Heaven**

They’re curled up together on a nice, soft motel bed, the air-conditioning purring loud. Jesse lifts his head up and glances over at the bright red numbers of the alarm clock. He must have fallen asleep.

Tulip makes a soft sound of irritation at Jesse’s wiggling. She digs her nails hard into the fabric of his t-shirt, scrapping them over the soft expanse of his belly. “M’gonna kill you,” she mumbles, though if to Jesse or to some unknown dream threat, he isn’t sure.

Cassidy smacks his lips a bit, mumbling in a language Jesse doesn’t know. He purrs almost as loudly as the air-conditioning system. When Tulip grumbles and mumbles, the vampire closes his arms more firmly around her waist, pulling her up against the long, lanky expanse of his own body. He huffs softly, snuffling his nose and lips against the pulse point of her neck. Jesse watches, amused and fascinated in turn, as Cassidy laps gently against Tulip’s skin in his sleep.

“Fuck off, Cass,” Tulip says, more awake, now, and none too pleased about it. She lashes out sleepily, throwing her elbow back and catching Cassidy in the sternum.  
  
Jesse wisely lets his own arms go lax and presses against the headboard as Cassidy flails into pained wakefulness, yelling in surprise and falling right over the far edge of the bed. Something cracks, and Jesse winces, hoping they’ve got enough blood on hand to knit whatever bones in Cassidy’s fool body just broke.

“Ow,” Cassidy says, muffled, from the floor.

Tulip sits up sharply, gone from hazy half-awakeness to full-on, dangerous alertness at the sound of Cassidy’s fall. “The hell?” She rolls on her side and peers down. Jesse is left with a very tempting view of his girlfriend’s backside. He doesn’t press the issue, though. His bones won’t heal up as easily should her elbow end up in _his_ ribs. “What’re you doin’ down there, Cassidy?”

A pause.

“Nothin’, love. Rolled over too far, probably.”

“Oh. Well, you all right?”

Jesse decides now is a good time to step in. “I heard something go snap.”

“Dammit,” Tulip yawns. She scrambles off via the foot of the bed and pads barefoot over to the large cooler they’d nicked several states back. In just a few minutes, between the two of them, they get their errant boyfriend up on his butt with a few pints of AB in him. Cassidy lolls his head against Jesse’s shoulder, his hand curling close around the curve of Tulip’s waist. He likes being fussed over. That hadn’t been difficult to figure out.

Slowly, bit by bit, they’ve come to understand each other’s bits and pieces. It doesn’t always go smooth--this is not the first broken bone between them on this road, for sure--but it goes, right enough.

Later on, as they crowed together in the small, square shower, a mess of limbs and suds, Jesse has a moment of unexpected clarity. He doesn’t know what Heaven is really like (for all that he’s had the ear of angels more than once), but he thinks that here, in this dingy roadside bedroom with two of the people he loves most in the universe, it’s as close as his battered soul is ever likely to get.

Then Cassidy slips and stomps down on his toes, and Tulip starts bitching about how the water’s getting cold and, well, honestly, it doesn’t change Jesse’s mind about the situation one bit.  
  
\--

**The Desert**

They sit on the nose of the Chevelle. It’s Tulip’s turn to be in the middle. Jesse’s hand and Cassidy’s hand intertwine, their clasped fingers resting in her lap, her own fingers cupped over their thumbs, rubbing in slow circles against their skin.

Above them, the stars are clear and bright as anything, dizzying in their number, awe-inspiring in their clarity.

Below them, just off the cliffside on which they perch, the horizon bleeds a sluggish, burning red.

“Love a good sunrise,” Cassidy says, not for the first time.

“Get a good eyeful. We’re putting you back in the car in a few minutes.” They’d given up and had Tulip’s windows tinted not too many weeks into the journey. It gobbled up a lot of Jesse’s poker winnings, but the expense is more than worth it. Ever since Cassidy had burned himself near to ash on the lawn of the church, neither Jesse nor Tulip feel very cavalier with the vampire’s hide.

Jesse tilts his head back, looking up. He used to feel something, seeing the stars. God had been up there, once, to his reckoning. Even when he hadn’t believed, as such, he’d felt _something_ , in the stars. Now, he just feels tired.

Tulip tilts her head against his shoulder. “It’s our quest,” she says, repeating his own words from long ago. She remembers that kind of thing. It’s an asset and a curse, both, depending on what is being said and when. “We can do whatever we want, Jesse.”

Cassidy fumbles in his jacket pocket with his good hand, putting on his sunglasses against the slowly building glare. Tulip is right. He only has a few minutes before the rays will branch out and light up the world. “Maybe we’re goin’ about it wrong. We could put out an ad, you know. In the paper, like. ‘Are You God? If so, please call the number below.’”

Tulip snorts her amusement.

Jesse’s eyes go wide. “Fuck,” he breathes. “Cassidy, you’re a genius!”

"Uh, well, not to be arguing or anythin’, Padre, but what do you mean, exactly?”

"Genesis. We can use Genesis. If he can hear it, he’ll have to obey. We could get the Word out. Take out an advertisement on the radio or somethin’. Get it spread around.”

“Jesse Custer! You are not gonna...gonna put a _personal ad_ for God!”

Jesse frowns at Tulip, an old, familiar gleam of darkness in his eye. “Give me one good reason why not?”

“Because if you do, I’ll kick your ass.”

Cassidy watches his two lovers stare each other down. “Actually, I think it sounds like a damn fine idea.”

Tulip’s glare nearly sets him on fire. Oh, or that might be the sun. Cassidy calmly pats a small burst of flame that starts up from the worn hole in the knee of his trousers. Jesse curses softly, scrambling off the car with Tulip, the two of them hustling their vampire into the safety of the backseat--and arguing all the while.

“I don’t get why you’re so against this!” Jesse says.

“‘Cos it ain’t right! Bad enough you going around bossing dumb country hicks into comin’ to Sunday services, Jesse. You can’t bully God! What if he don’t like it?”

“What’s he gonna do? Smite me?” Jesse slides into the passenger seat and slams the door hard.

“Maybe!” Tulip slams her own door harder.

Silence falls, tense and bristly as the cacti outside.

“Did it ever occur to either of you that maybe His Almighty Godliness isn’t in America? Or even on Earth t’all?”  
  
Jesse and Tulip turn as one to stare at him. Cassidy smiles, all teeth, completely unrepentant. “Well, those blokes on the Heaven Skype call, they didn’t say he’d come down amongst the little folks, did they? Just said he was gone and had gone missin’, like. And the way I figure it, there’s probably all sorts of places for God to go, if he’s of a mind to get out and about. Could be up there in space. Maybe takin’ a nice bit of personal leave on Pluto.”

Jesse puts his head in his hands, fingers carding through his hair and giving the long strands a vicious tug. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?” he says, voice strained.

“Well, it’s just a thought. No more likely a theory than your own. Didn’t figure it was worth stirring the pot over.”

“We’ve been looking for months! We’ve been _everywhere_!” Tulip punctuates her words by slapping Jesse in a continuous rhythm on the arm. “And he might not even _be here at all_. Not on the whole damn planet!”

“Way I figure it, it doesn’t really matter, though, does it?”

Tulip stops hitting. She frowns at Cassidy. “What do you mean? Of course it matters. We’ve been wasting all this time!”

Cassidy’s own frown back is tinged with real hurt. “That’s a matter o’ perspective, love. All these days with you lot on the road, sharing meals and stories and whatnot--never seemed like a waste, to me. We haven’t found God, yet. I don’t care. Found something a lot better.”

Jesse’s fingers go lose in his hair. He looks up, expression open and lost. “You really mean that, Cass?”

“‘Course I do. Sure, it’s been a bit rough from time to time. That’s the way of a good road trip, though, isn’t it?” He pauses, face breaking out into a wide grin. “But it’s been fun.”

Tulip slams her hand so hard on the steering wheel it sets off the horn. “God _damn_ it, Jesse Custer. And you, too, Cassidy. _Damn_ you both.”

“Pretty sure that’s been done already,” Cassidy replies, easily. He watches, first wary and then satisfied, as all the angry tension melts out of Tulip’s shoulders.

She starts up the ignition. “I’m sick of desert. I want to see an ocean, next.”

Jesse looks sidelong at her, the picture of shock. “So, we’re not giving up?”

Tulip backs up the car, looking over her shoulder all the while. Cassidy smiles at the focused, determined expression on her face. “I don’t give up. And, besides, way I figure it, we gotta run into God eventually, one way or the other. In the meantime, though, might as well actually do something exciting. I wanna go over a waterfall in a barrel. Fuck, I want to get on a plane, Jesse. We’ve done near used America up, looking for your God. Might as well branch out, now. Go to Paris. Go to Africa. I don’t give a shit.”

Jesse blinks. Slowly, he nods. “Yeah, all right.”

“Great!” Cassidy says, brightly. “I already got me a fake passport. An’ I have been feeling rather sick for the shores of the old homeland, as of late. You’re both gonna _love_ Ireland.”

“If I was God, I’d be in the Bahamas,” Tulip says, a sparkle in her eye where anger and defeat had been but a moment before.

“Ooh, wise thought. Or maybe Antarctica! Jesse, mate, I’ve always wanted to see a penguin.”

Jesse smiles, leaning his seat back and closing his eyes. “Whatever you want, darlin’. Let’s go talk to some penguins about God. Why not.”

Tulip and Cassidy lock eyes in the rearview mirror. Cassidy offers his girl a saucy wink. She rolls her eyes in reply, but she’s smiling, too.

The desert gets smaller and smaller behind them. The road opens up, and for the first time in a long time, the possibilities seem endless, and God feels within reach.

And the three of them are together. From Eden to the end of the world, that’ll be enough.


End file.
